Not upheld: Service failures generally complaint against HL Partnership Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Mr D complained that HL Partnership failed to secure a 1.59% mortgage interest rate from lender N before it was withdrawn on 10 February 2022, resulting in his mortgage being completed at 1.94% instead. Mr D obtained a decision in principle at 1.59% on 2 February but did not notify HL Partnership that he had found a property until 16:49 on 10 February, just 11 minutes before the rate expired at 17:00. The rate could only have been secured by either paying the £999 product fee upfront or submitting a full mortgage application before the deadline. The ombudsman found that while HL Partnership may not have explicitly advised Mr D of the option to pay the fee upfront, there was insufficient time to submit a full application and Mr D had originally chosen to add the fee to the loan balance. The ombudsman was not persuaded that Mr D would have chosen to pay the fee upfront in his circumstances at the time, despite his current insistence that he would have done so. The complaint was not upheld as the situation resulted from bad timing rather than unfair conduct by HL Partnership.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that while HL Partnership may not have explicitly advised Mr D that he could pay the product fee upfront to secure the lower rate on 10 February, this failure did not cause Mr D loss because: (1) there was insufficient time to submit a full mortgage application before the 17:00 deadline, making the fee payment the only viable option; (2) Mr D had originally chosen to add the fee to the loan balance rather than pay it upfront, and there was no contemporaneous evidence he wanted to change this; (3) in Mr D's circumstances at the time (not in financial difficulty, with secure employment and substantial savings), the £999 upfront cost to save approximately £40 per month was not an obvious choice; (4) the ombudsman was cautious about relying on Mr D's current recollection of what he would have done, given that his circumstances have since changed dramatically and human memory is fallible; (5) the situation resulted from bad timing and bad luck rather than unfair conduct by HL Partnership.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website